Part 3 (1/2)

A great impression was also made in all parts of the country by the occasional appearances of the Anti-Slavery Society's lecturers. In 1831, as Sir G. Stephen tells us, the younger section of the Anti-Slavery body resolved to stir up the country by sending lecturers to the villages and towns of the country. The M.P.'s did not much like it. The idea was novel to them. 'Trust to Parliament,' said they; the outsiders replied, 'Trust to the people.' This scheme of agitation, however, was rejected, and would have fallen to the ground had not a benevolent Quaker of the name of Cropper come forward. 'Friend S., what money dost thou want?'

'I want 20,000, but I will begin if I can get one.' 'Then, I will give thee 500.' Joseph Sturge immediately followed with a promise of 250, and Mr. Wilberforce twenty guineas; and 1,000 was raised, and competent agents sent out. It proved by no means an easy matter to obtain these lecturers, for their duty was not confined to lecturing; they had also to revive drooping anti-slavery societies and to establish new ones. Also they were to have collections at the end of every lecture. One of them who came to Wrentham was Captain Pilkington. 'Pilkington,' writes Sir George Stephen, 'was a pleasing lecturer, and won over many by his amiable manners; but he wanted power, and resigned in six months.' We in Wrentham, however, did not think so, and I can to this day recall the sensation he created in our rustic minds as he described the horrors of slavery, and showed us the whip and chains by which those horrors were caused. To the Dissenting chapel most of these lecturers were indebted for their audience, and if I ever worked hard as a boy, it was to get signatures to anti-slavery pet.i.tions. Naturally, a Church parson came to regard all that was attacked by Reformers as a bulwark of the Establishment, and in our part the Meetingers' were the sole friends of the slave.

As was to be expected, the reading of the village was of the most limited description. It is true we children jumped for joy as once a month came the carrier's cart from Beccles, with the books for the club-the _Evangelical Magazine_, for all the princ.i.p.al families of the congregation, and the _Penny Magazine_ and _Chambers's Journal_-then but in their infancy-for ourselves; but, apart from that, there was no reading worth mentioning. That which most astonishes the tourist in Ireland is the way in which people read the newspapers. In our Suffolk village the very reverse was the case, partly because there were few newspapers to read, partly because there were few to read them, and partly because they were dear to buy. The one paper which we took in was the _Suffolk Chronicle_, which made its appearance on Sat.u.r.day morning, the price of which was sixpence, and which was edited by a st.u.r.dy Radical of the name of King, who to the last held to the belief that to have a London letter full of literary or critical talk for the Suffolk farmers was, not to put too fine a point on it, to throw pearls before swine.

And perhaps he was right. I can well remember, when one of my early poetical contributions appeared in its columns, how a fear was expressed to me by a farmer's widow in our parish, lest 'it had cost me a lot o'

money' to have that effort of my muse in print. Mr. Childs, of Bungay, had many experiences, equally rustic and still more ill.u.s.trative of the simplicity of the cla.s.s. Once upon a time one of them came in a great state of excitement for a copy of the 'Life of Mr. General Gazetteer.'

On another occasion a farmer's wife came in search of a Testament. She wanted it directly, and she wanted it of a large type. A specimen was selected, which met with the worthy woman's approval. But the question was, could she have it in half an hour, as she would be away for that time shopping in the town, and would call for it on her return. She was told that she could, and great was her astonishment when, on calling on her return for the Testament, there it was, printed in the particular type she had selected, ready for her use.

I have a very strong idea that the calm of the country and the peaceful occupations of the people had not a very rousing influence upon the intellect. I may go further, and say that the cares of the farm, when high farming was unknown, did not much lift at that time the master above the man. The latter wore a smock-frock, while the former, perhaps, sported a blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and had rather a better kind of head-dress, and ambled along on a little steady cob, that knew at which ale-house to call for the regular allowance, quite as well as his master.

But as regards talk-which was chiefly of bullocks and pigs-well, there really was no very great difference after all. To such religion was the mainspring which kept the whole intellect going; and religion was to be had at the meeting. And I can well remember how strange it seemed to me that these rough, simple, untutored sons of the soil could speak of it with enthusiasm, and could pray, at any rate, with astonis.h.i.+ng fervour.

Away from the influence of the meeting-house there existed a Botian state of mind, only to be excited by appeals to the senses of the most palpable character, a state of mind in which faith-the evidence of things not seen, according to Paul-was quite out of the question; and I regret to say that, notwithstanding the activity of the last fifty years and the praiseworthy and laborious efforts of the East Anglian clergy in all quarters, suitably to rouse and feed the intellect of the East Anglian peasantry, a good deal yet remains to be done. Only a year or two ago, riding on an omnibus in a Suffolk village, the driver asked me if people could go to America by land. 'Of course not,' was my reply. 'Why do you ask such a question?' Well, it came out that he had 'heerd tell how people got to Americay in ten days; and he did not see how they could do that unless they went by land, and had good hosses to get 'em there at that time.' On my explaining the real state of affairs, he admitted, by way of apology, that he was not much of a traveller himself. Once he had been to Colchester; but that was a long time ago.

But to return to the _Suffolk Chronicle_. It was my duty as a lad, when it had been duly studied at home, to take it to the next subscriber, and I fancy by the time the paper had gone its round it was not a little the worse for wear. But there were other political impulses which tended to create and feed the sacred flame of civil and religious liberty. In one corner of the village lived a small shopkeeper, who stored away, among his pots and pans of treacle and sugar and grocery, a few well-thumbed copies, done up in dirty brown paper, of the squibs and caricatures published by Hone, whom I can just remember, a red-faced old gentleman in black, in the _Patriot_ office, and George Cruikshank, with whom I was to spend many a merry hour in after-life. This small shopkeeper was one of the chapel people-a kind of superintendent in the Sunday-school, for which office he was by no means fitted, but there was no one else to take the berth, and as the family also dealt with him in many ways, I had often to repair to his shop. It was then our young eyes were opened as to the wickedness in high places by the perusal of the 'Political House that Jack built,' and other publications of a similar revolutionary character. Nothing is sacred to the caricaturist, and half a century ago bishops and statesmen and lords and kings were very fair subjects for the exercise of his art. In our day things have changed for the better, partly as the result of the Radical efforts, of which respectability at that time stood so much in awe. London newspapers rarely reached so far as Wrentham. It was the fas.h.i.+on then to look to Ipswich for light and leading. However, as the cry for reform increased in strength, and the debates inside the House of Commons and out waxed fiercer, now and then even a London newspaper found its way into our house, and I can well remember how our hearts glowed within us as some one of us read, while father smoked his usual after-dinner pipe, previous to going out to spend the afternoon visiting his sick and afflicted; and how such names as Earl Grey, and Lord John Russell, and Lord Brougham-the people then called him Harry Brougham; it was a pity that he was ever anything else-were familiar in our mouths as household words.

In another way also there came to the children in Wrentham the growing perception of a larger world than that in which we lived, and moved, and had our being. One of the historic sites of East Anglia is Framlingham, a small market town, lying a little off the highroad to London, a few miles from what always seemed to me the very uninteresting village of Needham Market, though at one time G.o.dwin, the author of 'Caleb Williams,' preached in the chapel there. There is now a public school for Suffolk boys at Framlingham, and it may yet make a noise in the world. Framlingham in our time has given London Mr. Jeaffreson, a successful man of letters, and Sir Henry Thompson, a still more successful surgeon. In my young days it was chiefly noted for its castle. The mother of that amiable and excellent lady, Mrs. Trimmer, also came from Framlingham; and it is to be hoped that the old town may have had something to do with the formation of the character of a woman whom now we should sneer at, perhaps, as goody-goody, but who, when George the Third was King, did much for the education and improvement of the young. I read in Mrs. Trimmer's life 'that her father was a man of an excellent understanding, and of great piety; and so high was his reputation for knowledge of divinity, and so exemplary his moral conduct, that, as an exception to their general rule, which admitted no laymen, he was chosen member of a clerical club in the town (Ipswich) in which he resided. From him,' continues the biographer of the daughter, 'she imbibed the purest sentiments of religion and virtue, and learnt betimes the fundamental principles of Christianity.' Well, it is hoped Mr. Kirby did his best for his daughter; but, after all, how much more potent is the influence of a mother! And hence I may claim for Framlingham a fair share in the formation of even so burning and s.h.i.+ning a light as Mrs.

Trimmer.

The name Framlingham, say the learned, or did say-for what learned men say at one time does not always correspond with what they say at another-is composed of two Saxon words, signifying the habitation of strangers; and to strangers the place is still rich in interest. In its church sleeps the unfortunate, but heroic, Earl of Surrey, whose harmonious verse still delights the students of English literature. Some say he was born at Framlingham. This is matter of doubt; but there is no doubt about the fact that he was buried there by his son, the Earl of Northampton, who erected a handsome monument to his father's memory. The monument is an elevated tomb, with the Earl's arms and those of his lady in the front in the angles, and with an inscription in the centre. It has his effigy in armour, with an ermined mantle, his feet leaning against a lion couchant. On his left is his lady in black, with an ermined mantle and a coronet. Both have their hands held up as in prayer. On a projecting plinth in front is the figure of his second son, the Earl of Northampton, in armour, with a mantle of ermine, kneeling in prayer. Behind, in a similar plinth, kneeling with a coronet, and in robes, is his eldest daughter, Jane, Countess of Westmoreland, on the right; and his third daughter Catherine, the wife of Lord Henry Berkeley on the left. The monument is kept in order, and painted occasionally, as directed by the Earl of Northampton, out of the endowment of his hospital at Greenwich. In repairing the monument in October, 1835, the Rev.

George Attwood, curate of Framlingham, discovered the remains of the Earl lying embedded in clay, directly under his figure on his tomb. It is difficult now to find what high treason the chivalrous and poetic and gallant Earl had been guilty of; but at that time our eighth Henry ruled the land, and if he wished anyone out of the way, he had not far to go for witnesses or judge or jury ready to do his wicked and wanton will.

To the shame of England be it said, the Earl of Surrey was beheaded when he was only thirty years of age. No particulars are preserved of his deportment in prison or on the scaffold, but from the n.o.ble spirit he evinced at his trial, and from his general character, it cannot be doubted that he behaved in the last scene of his existence with fort.i.tude and dignity. On the barbarous injustice to which he was sacrificed comment is unnecessary; but regret at his early fate is increased by the circ.u.mstance that Henry was in extremities when he ordered his execution, and that his swollen and enfeebled hands were unequal to the task of signing his death-warrant. In this respect more fortunate was the father of Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk, who is buried near the altar of the church at Framlingham. He also was condemned to death, but in the meanwhile the King died, and his victim was set free. Not far off is the tomb of Henry Fitzroy, a natural son of King Henry. He was a friend of Surrey, and was to have married his sister. The other monuments which adorn the interior of this magnificent church are a table of black marble, supported by angels, to the memory of Sir Robert Hitcham, a mural monument by Roubillac, and others to commemorate virtues and graces, as embodied in the lives of decent men and women in whom the world has long ceased to take any interest.

The venerable castle-here I quote Dr. Dugdale's 'British Traveller'-with its eventful history, imparts the strongest interest to the town of Framlingham. Tradition refers its origin to the sixth century, and ascribes it to Redwald, one of the early Saxon monarchs. St. Edmund the Martyr fled hither in 870, and was besieged by the Danes, who took Framlingham and held it fifty years. The Norman King gave the castle to the BiG.o.ds. The castle pa.s.sed through many hands. It was there Queen Mary took shelter when, after the death of Edward VI., Lady Jane Grey was called to the throne, and thence she came to London, on the capture of the former, to take possession of the crown. It was an evil day for England when she came to Framlingham Castle and beguiled the hearts of the Suffolk men. Old Fox tells us that when Mary had returned to her castle at Framlingham there resorted to her 'the Suffolke men, who, being alwayes forward in promoting the proceedings of the Gospel, promised her their aid and help, so that she would not attempt the alteration of the religion which her brother, King Edward, had before established by laws and orders publickly enacted, and received by the consent of the whole realm in his behalf. She afterwards agreed with such promise made unto them that no innovation should be made of religion, as that no man would or could then have mis...o...b..ed her. ”Victorious by the aid of the Suffolke men,” Queen Mary soon forgot her promise. They of course remonstrated. It was, methinks,' adds Fox, 'an heavie word that she answered to the Suffolke men afterwards which did make supplication unto her grace to performe her promise. ”For so much,” saith she, ”as you being but members desire to rule your head, you shall one day perceive the members must obey their head, and not look to rule over the same.”'

Well, Queen Mary was as good as her word. As Fox adds, 'What she performed on her part the thing itself and the whole story of the persecution doth testifie.' But the stubborn Suffolk gospellers were not to be put down, and a remnant had been left in Framlingham, as well as in other parts of the country. At Framlingham we find a Richard Goltie, son-in-law of Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, was inst.i.tuted to the rectory in 1630. In 1650 he refused the engagement to submit to the then existing Government, and was removed, when Henry Sampson, M.A., a fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was appointed by his college to the vacancy.

He continued there till the Restoration, when Mr. Goltie returned and took possession of the living, which he continued to hold till his death.

Not being satisfied to conform, Mr. Sampson continued awhile preaching at Framlingham to those who were attached to his ministry, in private houses and other buildings, and by his labours laid the foundation of the Congregational or Independent Church in that town, as appears from a note in the Church Book belonging to the Dissenters meeting at Woodbridge, in the Quay Lane. Mr. Sampson collected materials for a history of Nonconformity, a great part of which is incorporated in Calamy and Palmer's works. It was to him that John Fairfax, of Needham Market, wrote, when he and some other ministers were shut up in Bury Gaol for the crime of preaching the Gospel. It appears that they had met in the parish church, at Walsham-le-Willows, where, after the liturgy was read by the clergyman of the parish, a sermon was preached by a non-licensed minister. The party were then taken and committed to prison, where they remained till the next Quarter Sessions, when they were released upon their recognisances to appear at the next a.s.sizes. Then, it seems, though not convicted upon any other offence, upon the suggestion of the justices, to whom they were strangers, they were committed again to prison, on the plea that _they were persons dangerous to the public peace_. Thus were Dissenters treated in the good old times. Mr. Sampson seems to have fared somewhat better. After his removal, he travelled on the Continent, returned to London, entered himself at the College of Physicians, and lived and died in good repute. The old congregation having become Unitarian, a new one was formed, and of this Church a pillar was Mr. Henry Thompson-a gentleman well known and widely honoured in his day. This Mr. Thompson had a son, who was sent to Wrentham to be educated for awhile with myself. An uncle of his, one of the most amiable of men, lived at Southwold, close by, and I presume it was by his means that the settlement was effected. Be that as it may, the change was a welcome one, as it gave me a pleasant companion for nearly five years of boyish life. I confess my two sisters-one of whom has, alas!

long been in her grave-did all they could in the way of sports and pastimes to meet my wants and wishes, and act like boys; but the fact is, though it may be doubted in these days of Women's Rights, girls are not boys, nor can they be expected to behave as such.

I confess the advent of this young Thompson from Framlingham was a great event in our small family circle. In the first place he came from a town, and that at once gave him a marked superiority. Then his father kept a horse and gig, for it was thus young Thompson came to Wrentham, and all the world over a gig has been a symbol of the respectability dear to the British heart; and he had been for that time and as an only son carefully and intelligently trained by one of the family who, in the person of the late Edward Miall, founder of the _Nonconformist_, and M.P.

for Bradford, was supposed to be the incarnation of what was termed the dissidence of Dissent. Young Thompson was also what would be called a genteel youth, and gave me ideas as to wearing straps to my trousers, oiling my hair, and generally adorning my person, which had never entered into my unsophisticated head. He also had been to London, and as Framlingham was some twenty miles nearer the Metropolis-the centre of intelligence-than Wrentham, the intelligence of a Framlingham lad was of course expected, _a fortiori_, to be of a stronger character than that of one born twenty miles farther from the sun of London. There was also a good deal of talent in the family on the mother's side. Mrs. Thompson was a Miss Medley, and Mr. Medley was an artist of great merit, the son of Mr. Medley, of Liverpool, a leading Baptist minister in his day, and a writer of hymns still sung in Baptist churches. Mr. Medley was also active as a Liberal, and was credited by us boys with a personal acquaintance with no less ill.u.s.trious an individual than the great Brougham himself. Once or twice he came to lodge during the summer at Southwold; naturally he was visited there by his grandson, who would return well primed with political anecdote to our rustic circle, and was deemed by me more of an authority than ever. Once or twice, too, I had the honour of being a visitor, and heard Mr. Medley, a fine old gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, talk of art and artists and other matters quite out of my usual sphere. It is not surprising, then, that the grandson became in time quite an artist himself, though he is better known to the world, not so much in that capacity, but as Sir Henry Thompson, certainly not the least distinguished surgeon of our day. In Lord Beaconsfield's last novel, 'Endymion,' we have a pa.s.sing reference to one Wrentham lad, Sir Charles Wetherell, as 'the eccentric and too uncompromising Wetherell.' a.s.suredly the fame of another lad, Sir Henry Thompson, connected with Wrentham, will longer live.

This reference to Sir Henry Thompson reminds me of his early attempts at rhyme, which I trust he will forgive me for rescuing from oblivion. Once upon a time we captured a young cuckoo, and having carefully gorged it with bread-and-milk, and left it in a nest in an outhouse, which we devoted mainly to rabbits, the next morning the poor bird was found to be dead. A prize was offered for the best couplet. Three of us contended.

My sister wrote:

'This lonely sepulchre contains A little cuckoo's dead remains.'

I wrote:

'To our grief, cuckoo sweet Is lying underneath our feet.'

Thompson took quite a different and, read by the light of his subsequent career, a far more characteristic view of the case. He took care, as a medical man, to dwell on the cause which had terminated the career of so interesting a bird. According to him,

'It had a breast as soft as silk, And died of eating bread-and-milk.'

a.s.suredly in this case the child was father to the man.

But the great awakening of the time, that which made the dry bones live, and fluttered the dove-cotes of Toryism-we never heard the word Conservative then-was the General Election. At that time we were always having General Elections. We had one, of course, when George IV. died and King William reigned in his stead; we had another when the Duke was out and the Whigs came in; and then we had another when the cry ran through the land, and reached even the most remote villages of East Anglia, of 'The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!' Voters were brought down, or up, as the case might be, from all quarters of the land. Coaches-full came tearing along, gorgeous with election flags, and placarded all over with names of rival candidates. Gentlemen of ancient lineage called to request of the meanest elector the favour of his vote and influence. It was with pain the Liberals of our little village resolved to vote against our Benacre neighbour, Sir Thomas Gooch, who had long represented the county, but of whom the Radicals spoke derisively as Gaffer Gooch, or the Benacre Bull, and chose in his stead a country squire known as Robert Newton Shaw, utterly unknown in our quarter of the county.

It was rather a trying time for the Wrentham Liberals and Dissenters to do their duty, for Sir Thomas was a neighbour, and always was a pleasant gentleman in the parish, and had power to do anyone mischief who went against him. Our medical man did not vote at all. Our squire actually, I believe, supported Sir Thomas, and altogether respectable people found themselves in an extremely awkward position. At Southwold the people were a little more independent, for Gaffer Gooch rarely illuminated that little town with his presence; and as my father, with the economy which is part and parcel of the Scotchman as he leaves his native land, but which rarely extends to his children, had, by teaching gentlemen's sons and other ways, been able to save a little, which little had been devoted to the purchase of cottage property in Southwold (well do I remember the difficulty there was in collecting the rents; never, a.s.suredly, were people so much afflicted or so unfortunate when the time of payment came), it was for Southwold that he claimed his vote. I, as the son, was permitted to share in the glories of that eventful day. The election took place at school-time, and my companion was Henry Thompson. We had to walk betimes to Frostenden, where Farmer Downing lived, who was that _rara avis_ a Liberal tenant farmer; but of course he did not vote tenant farmer, but as a freeholder. It was with alarm that Mrs. Downing saw her lord and master drive off with us two lads in the gig. There had been riots at London, riots as near as Ipswich, and why not at Halesworth? A mile or two after we had started we met, per arrangement, the Southwold contingent, who joined us with flags flying and a band playing, and all the pride and pomp and circ.u.mstance of war. We rode in a gig, and our animal was a steady-going mare, and behaved as such; but all had not gigs or steady-going mares. Some were in carts, some were on horseback, some in ancient vehicles furbished up for the occasion; and as the band played and the people shouted, some of the animals felt induced to dance, and especially was this restlessness on the part of the quadrupeds increased as we neared Halesworth, in the market-place of which was the polling-booth, and in the streets of which we out-lying voters riding in procession made quite a show. Halesworth, or Holser, as it was called, was distant about nine miles, lying to the left of Yoxford, a village which its admirers were wont to call the Garden of Suffolk. In 1809 the Bishop of Norwich wrote from Halesworth: 'The church in this place is uncommonly fine, and the ruins of an old castle (formerly the seat of the Howards) are striking and majestic.' But when we went there the ruins were gone-the more is the pity-and the church remained, at that time held by no less a Liberal than Richard Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. I used at times to meet with a country gentleman-a brother of a n.o.ble lord-who after he had spent a fortune merrily, as country gentlemen did in the good old times, came to live on a small annuity, and, in spite of his enormous daily consumption of London porter at the leading inn of the town, managed to reach a good old age. The hon. gentleman and I were on friendly terms, and sometimes he would talk of Whately, who had often been at his house. But, alas! he remembered nothing of a man who became so celebrated in his day except that he would eat after dinner any number of oranges, and was so fond of active exercise that he would take a pitchfork and fill his tumbrels with manure, or work just like a labourer on a farm. Of the Doctor's aversion to church-bell ringing we have a curious ill.u.s.tration in a letter which appeared in the _Suffolk Chronicle_ in 1825: 'A short time since a wedding took place in the families of two of the oldest and most respectable inhabitants of the town, when it was understood that the Rector had, for the first time since his induction to his living, given permission for the bells to greet the happy pair. After, however, sounding a merry peal a short hour and a half, a message was received at the belfry that the Rector thought they had rung long enough. The tardiness with which this mandate was obeyed soon brought the rev. gentleman in person to enforce his order, which was then reluctantly complied with to the great disappointment of the inhabitants, and mortification of the ringers, several of whom had come from a considerable distance to a.s.sist in the festivities of the day.' The Independent chapel was an old-fas.h.i.+oned meeting-house, full of heavy pillars, which, as they intercepted the view of the preacher, were favourable to that gentle sleep so peculiarly refres.h.i.+ng on a Sunday afternoon-especially in hot weather-in the square and commodious family pew. The minister was an old and venerable-looking divine of the name of Dennant, who was always writing little poems-I remember the opening lines of one,

'A while ago when I was nought, And neither body, soul, nor thought'-